Feel the Hate

Commentators couldn't help but reflect on the racism of Netanyahu's election day rally cry on Facebook:

"The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the ballot booths." (Netanyahu surges to 'great victory', Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/3/15)

How dare those 'Arabs' (actually the descendents of Palestinians who managed to escape expulsion from their homes and lands in 1948) use the ballot box against us! (And this despite decades of Israeli propagandists exploiting the Israeli 'Arab' right to vote as the sine qua non of Israel's alleged democratic character).

The only surprise, however, is that anyone should be surprised.

Whether it's Zionism's godfather, Theodor Herzl, writing of "spiriting the penniless [Palestinian Arab] population across the border" in his diary in 1895,* or the 1917 Anglo-Zionist Balfour Declaration fantastically dismissing the Arab Muslim/Christian population of Palestine (90% at the time) as Palestine's "existing non-Jewish communities," Zionism has routinely set its face against the presence Palestine's indigenous sons and daughters, ignoring, denying, confining, repressing or, circumstances permitting, driving them off their land and into exile as in 1948 and 1967.

In brief, Zionist settler-colonialism abhors the very existence of these people, casting them as an existential, even demonic ('Hamas death cult') threat to its control of their native homeland.

Which brings me to the subject of this post, Zionist hate speech. The term hate speech, of course, is one Zionist propagandists have made peculiarly their own, using it to describe practically any and every manifestation of anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist reaction to the crimes of the Zionist project in or beyond Palestine. Meanwhile, the fact that Zionists themselves indulge in hate speech, particularly but not always against the Palestinians, is insufficiently regarded. 

Keeping in mind The International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR) definition of hate speech, namely, "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence," tell me if the following - hosted at the jwire.com.au website - doesn't fit the definition:

"At the beginning of the 20th Century, if one were referred to as a Palestinian, it was automatically implied that he or she was Jewish. Decades later Arabs cleverly commandeered the term 'Palestinian' and fools the world over, including Jewish fools, have bought the propaganda that 'Palestinians' have never forgiven the division of their 'country' by the UN. If there was such a country, who were its rulers, what was its currency, the questions are endless, but no one poses these types of questions to the Palestinian Authority.

"The facts are that there was no country called Palestine.

"Simply put, Palestine was a land mass administered finally by the British until the 1947 Partition Plan when only a part was allocated back to its century's [sic] old rightful owners, the Jewish people.

"Successive Israeli governments have never once opened their mouth [sic] in a convincing way to debunk the entire 'Palestinian' narrative and in the process appear to have discarded the Jewish heritage of the Temple Mount.

"So much for the profound: 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem.'

"Does no one see the consequences of this tragic situation?

"It is time for Israel to act like a sovereign power in control of its own destiny and take unilateral action on many fronts, including the reclaiming of the Temple Mount before it is lost forever.

"In short, it is time for the gloves to finally come off." (The unfolding tragedy that is the Temple Mount, Gil Solomon, 15/3/15)

Some of Solomon's readers were sufficiently incited to comment as follows:

"I stood right at the entrance of the Dome of the Rock and prayed it would be demolished and the Temple rebuilt."

"You have, in the past, accused me, Gil, of 'touchy, feely' political views - well, sit back because it's just a matter of a few short years and Netanyahu and his people will be sitting pretty on land rightfully theirs."

"I most strongly object to the international community which demands that Jews share their land with a pretend people, saying not a word when those same aggressive, callous, lying pack of pretenders refuses to share a site holy to Jews and significant to mohammedans only on an interpretation of a dream."

You can feel the hate.

For another recent example of this kind of bile - appearing in The Australian Jewish News - see my 8/7/14 post Settler Haters Hate.

[*See my 4/1/13 post What Would Herzl Do?]